from the that's-just-crazy dept

Hey, remember that funny little trademark lawsuit brought by a software company against the Batman movie makers over fictional software that appeared in the film? Oh, I have one way better than that. Let me tell you about the lawsuit being brought by a journalist against the filmmakers behind American Hustle because a notably crazy character in the film totally portrayed said journalist's article from the 70's incorrectly.

Paul Brodeur, a real-life science journalist who has written for The New Yorker, is suing the team behind American Hustle for a reference made to him in the film. In the film, Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) tells her husband, Irving (Christian Bale), that microwaves take “all of the nutrition out of our food.” When Irving calls the claim bullshit, Rosalyn responds, “It’s not bullshit. I read it in an article. Look, by Paul Brodeur.”

Brodeur’s complaint states, “Paul Brodeur has never written an article or ever declared in any way that a microwave oven ‘takes all the nutrition out of our food.'” Rather, it states, Brodreur has publicly denounced that claim, pointing to a 1978 interview with People Magazine.

And, as it turns out, Brodeur is actually correct about that part: he didn't claim that microwaving food took all the nutrition out of it. He made claims about the resulting radiation exposure being a problem, but nothing about nutrition. Even in the book, he wrote about all the myriad dangers of microwave energy, be it from ovens or from US and Soviet soldiers beaming them into each other's faces and stuff, but still there was no mention of nutrition. For this slight against his position, Brodeur is claiming libel, defamation, slander and false light, and would please like $1 million and the removal of his name from future prints of the film, mmkay?

Since he appears to have missed out on the character development in the movie, the character of Rosalyn is a complete damned whack-job who says innumerable crazy things. In other words, she's portrayed in a manner that renders the viewer completely incapable of taking her seriously or in anyway thinking anything she claims or says is valid. She's a manipulative sociopath. In other words, nobody watched this scene in this movie and immediately thought, "Ha, what a piece of shit Paul Brodeur is."

That's because the referenced article came out in the late 70's, featuring a subject nobody really cares about any more, and...whatever this is dumb, and I don't want to talk about all the reasons why. The point is, Brodeur wasn't harmed by a crazy fictional character misstating his position in an article from a time when John Lennon was reigning king.

from the legal-conundrums dept

We recently wrote about the initially cool, but eventually frustrating, story of author James Erwin, who turned a comment he made on a Reddit story into a movie deal with Warner Bros. The frustrating part came out of the news that Erwin mentioned in an interview that due to the "locked-down IP rights" common in the movie industry, he couldn't spend more time on Reddit with the community that built up around the "Rome, Sweet Rome" story.

Now, some in our comments questioned whether Erwin even had the right to grant such an exclusive license to Warner Bros., noting both that the community helped develop part of the story and that Reddit's terms might forbid it. Eriq Gardner, at THREsq, decided to dig into the legal question, and suggests that it's entirely possible that Warner Bros. could not have exclusively licensed the story, and in theory anyone else could try to get the same rights from Reddit itself.

Part of it is the boilerplate language in Reddit's terms:

"you agree that by posting messages, uploading files, inputting data, or engaging in any other form of communication with or through the Website, you grant us a royalty-free, perpetual, non-exclusive, unrestricted, worldwide license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, enhance, transmit, distribute, publicly perform, display, or sublicense any such communication in any medium (now in existence or hereinafter developed) and for any purpose, including commercial purposes, and to authorize others to do so."

This really is boilerplate. Look at almost any modern user-generated content platform and you'll see similar terms. But, at the very least here, it suggests that while Erwin could offer up some rights to WB, he cannot grant them exclusively. In fact, Reddit itself could make the same movie based on this... or it could separately license the story to a competing studio. It seems unlikely that they would do that, but it certainly seems possible.

Additionally, there are still some questions about whether or not Erwin could have licensed parts of the story that were developed by others:

although Erwin undoubtedly did much of the hard work in crafting the story himself, during the genesis of "Rome, Sweet Rome," some of Reddit's other users made suggestions to his work that may ultimately shape the final story.

Those concepts, if they are copyrightable, might not be Erwin's to exclusively license.

Either way, while I doubt it will happen, it certainly would be interesting and amusing to see what would happen if Reddit tried to license the same rights to a competing studio.

from the wb,-you're-doing-it-wrong dept

Here's a story that starts out great... but then gets annoying towards the end.

I know we've got many Redditors here, but for those who don't spend time there, they might find this story interesting. We keep hearing stories these days about how the big movie studios are afraid to try anything particularly original when it comes to greenlighting movies -- preferring these days to do remakes, adaptations or sequels, knowing that they all bring in a guaranteed audience of some kind. So it's interesting to see (as sent in by Aaron DeOliveira) that Warner Bros. "aggressively" went after and bought the rights to a story that was written in the comments of Reddit. It started when a Reddit user asked if a modern US Marine infantry battalion could wipe out the entire Roman Empire given the modern technology they would have.

Reddit user Prufrock451, who is more commonly known as James Erwin (and is apparently an author and a "two-time Jeopardy winner") jumped at the opportunity to dash off a bit of fiction describing "day 1" of such a modern military unit being transported to the Roman Empire. And the Redditors liked it. Big time. They encouraged, nay demanded, that he write more. So he wrote some more, and an entire Subreddit was created, called Rome Sweet Rome, with plenty of people contributing additional ideas, including graphics and a hypothetical movie poster.

And late last week, the news came out that Warner Bros. had purchased the movie rights. Of course, there's a long way from buying the rights to actually having a movie made. I know folks who have sold movie rights only to see them languish for ages with nothing ever happening. Still, whole thing from comment to movie deal? A little over a month. When I read all that, I thought about how cool a move this was, and how it was nice to see Warner Bros. apparently being progressive on such a deal and realizing the value not just of the story but the wider Reddit community.

But then I read a little more. In an interview with Erwin on ScreenRant, Erwin admits that now that a deal has been signed he has to stop participating in the subreddit because everyone's "lawyered-up" and worried about "locked-down IP rights."

Unfortunately, I have not been able to spend time on Reddit. This is not because I think Iím too big for my britches now. The Internet is a chaotic, give-and-take place Ė and that creates nightmares for a lawyered-up industry based on locked-down IP rights. In a perfect world, I would be in that subreddit every day Ė but thatís not whatís best for the project. I want this to succeed, and that unfortunately meant going dark for a while. I hope the folks in the RomeSweetRome subreddit see this little mash note. I miss em.

Ah, what a shame. What could have been a fun, collaborative process that really involved and built on the community -- who would have loved it -- instead becomes a lame "lawyered-up" situation with "locked-down IP rights." Sorry, WB, but you missed the whole point.

from the but-what-about-the-copyrights? dept

We've written numerous times about the famed mashup artist Girl Talk (Gregg Gillis), who has created some extremely popular and well-reviewed albums by mashing up hundreds of songs together into songs that sound both entirely new, and which give appreciative nods towards the originals. Girl Talk has won various awards and has even been mentioned in Congress by Rep. Mike Doyle, as an example of why copyright should allow more such mashups and remixes, rather than having it crack down on the practice. And, of course, there's also been an excellent movie about Girl Talk, called RiP: A Remix Manifesto, which I encourage people to watch if they haven't seen it yet.

Of course, there are all sorts of copyright questions around this. Some folks are stunned that Gillis hasn't been sued over his widespread sampling. There are a variety of theories as to why that might be -- from the idea that Gillis' use might actually cause courts to recognize that such sampling should be fair use, to the theory that the music industry doesn't go after Gillis because he's "white, middle-class and educated," as opposed to those who often do find themselves on the receiving end of sampling lawsuits.

Even if you're not a fan of Girl Talk's music, the idea -- "an epic, 71-minute-long dance-music video" -- is pretty cool. It's tough to watch the video and not smile, just in general, at the joy it expresses (my favorite part is right in the middle where a woman in the background, who is clearly just a bystander, starts dancing along as well). The filmmaker, Jacob Krupnick, has also put up a Kickstarter page for the project, and it's more than met its goal (it had already, but I'm sure the NYT Magazine article has only helped it get a lot more money too).

What struck me as interesting wasn't just that Krupnick wanted to make a movie based on All Day, but that a lot of his inspiration came from both RiP: Remix a Manifesto and having briefly worked with the lead dancer, Anne Marsen, in a video shoot for a commercial a year and a half ago. As the article recounts, Marsen is a classically trained ballet dancer, who dropped out of the University of the Arts and has since:

gone rogue, dance-wise, taking three or four classes a day from studios all over New York City -- jazz, modern, tap, salsa, flamenco, belly-dancing, break-≠dancing, West African, pole dancing, capoeira -- borrowing gestures and movements and boiling them all down into her own unique B-girl bouillabaisse.

Basically, she mixes a variety of different styles in a somewhat freelance manner. Krupnick had been looking for another project to work with Marsen on, and when he heard the latest Girl Talk album, he realized the basic similarities in style:

As Krupnick listened to the album, it struck him that Girl Talk makes music the way Anne Marsen makes dance. "I started to hyperventilate a little bit, the way you do when you get excited about something that you really want to come true," he told me.

And this is how art gets created. Of course, it's interesting that no one questions Marsen for mixing all different kinds of dances that she's learned from others into her own style -- but when Girl Talk does it, people complain about how it's "stealing" and "infringing." Either way, take these two individuals (along with a supporting cast) and you get this entirely new and entertaining movie as well.

Derivative art creating derivative art.

That this goes against the claims of copyright maximalists will, undoubtedly, be ignored by those copyright maximalists. Of course, there's a separate question here: which is what about the copyright on the film. Gillis releases all of the Girl Talk stuff under a Creative Commons license. But, it's a license that does not allow for commercial use (which some find hypocritical on his part). I doubt he would object to the film (if he did, the social backlash would likely be quite strong), but given that Krupnick is raising money via Kickstarter, someone could make an argument that this is "commercial use." Separately, if Krupnick actually tries to do something more with the movie, he'll almost certainly not be able to get E&O (errors and omissions insurance). Last year, I covered the ridiculous difficulty that RiP's filmmaker, Brett Gaylor had to go through trying to get insurance for his film -- showing us his massive spreadsheet of samples he tried to clear, before giving up.

But the bigger question is whether or not any of the copyright holders on the music Girl Talk uses would decide to step in as well. While they might not have sued Gillis, there's nothing saying that they have to let this movie go forward. Beyond the copyright issues in the samples in the album itself, now Krupnick also has to worry about synch rights, which appear to be one of the lower levels of hell according to various filmmakers I've dealt with in the past.

One can hope, that as with Gillis' original works, that any rights holders know better than to call the lawyers -- and it would be a great story if that actually happens. But, I certainly wouldn't be surprised (though, I'd be very disappointed) if this wonderful idea for a film runs into legal problems. Assuming that happens, it'll be yet another example of copyright not inspiring new creative works, but stifling them (though inspiring legal fees).

from the cultural-divide dept

We've pointed out many times that the laws, especially around things like copyright, simply don't match up with the basic cultural norms of what it means to be a kid today. Remember, for example, the woman who was arrested and spent two nights in jail because she used a camera to capture a few very short segments of the movie Twilight, because she was trying to capture her sister's birthday party (with the movie showing being a part of the event). Now, TorrentFreak points us to an unintentionally hilarious article written by a woman who appears to make her living as a Marilyn Monroe/Anna Nicole Smith impersonator, complaining about how a bunch of Justin Bieber fans were thieves because they dared to film snippets of his new movie (wait, Justin Bieber has a movie?!?) at a special VIP Premiere ($30 a ticket!) with their camera phones.

Bieber fans watched the film and screamed with glee at the sight of him on the big screen, but many were also committing a crime. The crime was committed when they began taping the film for their own use. Since most of the audience consisted of teenage girls with their parents, I am left to wonder what parent lets their child commit a crime? Even scarier ,what kind of parent lets them do it in public?

Also I wonder how can Justin's fans call themselves true fans by stealing from the star?

Just what they "stole" from Bieber is not made clear, of course. Of course, there seems to be a bit of a cultural divide here. The Bieber fans aren't stealing anything. What they're doing is sharing with their friends. They're not sharing the movie, of course. I'm sure the screaming crew of Bieber fans are all begging their parents to take them to the theater (probably multiple times). What they're sharing is the experience of going to see the film. Filming a snippet and sending it to friends is a way of letting their friends know "hey, look, I got to go to the Premiere!" or something along those lines.

Of course, thanks to rampant lobbying by the MPAA, such filming is a crime. But this sort of situation just serves to underline why it's stupid to consider just any filming of a movie to be a criminal act. The screaming teen girls at the Bieber movie were not "pirating" the movie in any sense. They were trying to share a cultural experience. It seems pretty bizarre that doing so actually does put them at risk of being sent to jail for a few years.

from the change-is-in-the-air dept

Last summer, we wrote about a short film that was shot entirely with a DSLR camera, a Pentax K-7. Lately, we've been talking about when a feature film is going to be shot with a smartphone. In the interim, however, comes the news that not only was the indie flick Like Crazy shot entirely with a Canon 7D DSLR, but it's been sold to Paramount for $4 million at Sundance. When we've talked in the past about how the tools of filmmaking are getting cheaper and more powerful every day, we always get some folks who brush it aside, and make some sort of elitist statement about how such "low end" cameras can "never" make a quality film that will show in theaters. It would appear that at least some folks in Hollywood disagree.

from the reasons-to-buy? dept

Last month, we talked about how the new Freakonomics movie was going to flip the traditional windowing methodology, and get released online before it was in theaters. At the time, Stephen Dubner warned that there was also going to be another "wrinkle" in how they released the movie. I'm not sure if this is it, but it's been announced that there is going to be a special "pay what you want" screening in select cities (Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Chicago, Boston, Dallas, Philadelphia, Denver, and Seattle). Free isn't an option, however. The prices range from $0.01 to $100, and you also have to answer some survey questions. I'm always a little hesitant to buy into straight "pay what you want" deals, because I don't think they represent much -- and I worry that people read too much into the results of any particular experiment, especially when little is done to give people a real reason to buy on top of the content. So, to some extent, I worry how Levitt and Dubner might interpret any results from this experiment.

from the but-pirates-want-everything-for-free!!!! dept

A bunch of folks have been sending over the news that filmmaker Simon Klose was attempting to raise $25,000 in order to hire a professional editor to edit down over 200 hours of footage Simon had filmed of The Pirate Bay's founders over the period of the last couple of years. In his intro pitch, he pointed out that some thought it was strange that he was making a movie about an organization that many in the movie industry hated. But, Simon, of course, points out that such a response is silly. The industry and the market have changed, and there are new avenues to raising funds -- such as directly via a platform like Kickstarter. What's really impressive though is that it only took three days to raise the funds, and there are still over three more weeks to go, and the amount raised keeps going up.

In an interview about the fundraising process, Klose points out that it's not at all surprising that people who support things like The Pirate Bay would support his film, because he was offering them something they actually wanted to support:

I think it's natural that you support stuff you believe in. The people who support our movie obviously don't believe in the services that the movie and record industries are offering them. To me it's much more ironic that the corporations are claiming that the system used to be just and beneficial to artists before the internet came around. It never was.

And, of course, Klose fully intends to release the movie via The Pirate Bay (as well as by DVD). When asked about how he feels about people file sharing his movie, he notes:

Filesharing is great marketing, I don't mind people marketing my work.

from the privacy-matters dept

We've seen so many stories about movie theaters that have no problem treating customers like criminals that it's surprising to see one finally get in trouble for it. JJ sent over a story about a movie theater in Quebec that has been fined $10,000 for an unnecessary search of customers. Not surprisingly, the search was to try to catch people bringing video equipment into the theater (wait, I thought the movie industry said Canadian theaters were soft on people videotaping movies?!?), but the court ruled that the search violated one family's privacy when it also turned up a daughter's birth control pills (which her mother wasn't too pleased to discover) along with some snacks they were bringing into the theater. The theater owner acknowledges that they can still search bags, but have to do so with much stricter rules. Or, you know, they could treat paying attendees like they're customers rather than criminals, and perhaps people would feel a lot better about going out to the movies.

from the calling-more-attention... dept

Last week, we discussed why it looked like movie studio 20th Century Fox was overreacting to the leak of a workprint copy of the upcoming movie Wolverine. The studio could have easily used the leak to get good publicity. Instead, it's freaking out and rushing around trying to blame everyone. The latest person caught in the crossfire? A columnist for Fox News who downloaded the leaked copy and wrote a review... Since both 20th Century Fox and Fox News are owned by News Corp., the studio flipped out and the writer, Roger Friedman, has supposedly been fired. For what? For actually admitting that the movie was out there? It's not like it hasn't been all over the news. For calling more attention to the fact that the movie can be downloaded? Firing Friedman seems to be getting a lot more attention than the review actually did. Once again, just because you have the legal right to do something about infringement, doesn't mean it makes any sense. Here's yet another case of a Hollywood studio letting its legal rights override common sense, and because of that, it's harming its own reputation.